It appears that the Republican Party and the conservative chattering classes are determined to identify Barack Obama with every famous conservative disaster of recent history. BP’s Gulf Oil spill, we are told incessantly, is “Obama’s Katrina,” presumably because of the common geographic location, and now we hear that the silly, contrived “scandal” over alleged job offers to Democratic primary candidates will be “Obama’s Watergate.” What’s next: Obama’s Iraq? Obama’s U.S. Attorney Scandal? Obama’s Plamegate? Obama’s Illegitimate Election? (Oh, sorry, I forgot, Republicans have already used that one!).
In any event, the “Watergate” analogy is insane, unless maybe you are too young or too poorly read to remember what Watergate entailed. As Joe Conason explains at Salon:

“Watergate” was the place where the president’s henchmen staged a “third-rate burglary” of the Democratic National Committee headquarters on a June night in 1972, but its historical definition is the vast gangsterism of the Nixon regime. Watergate involved no political job offers, but a series of burglaries, warrantless domestic wiretaps, illegal spying, campaign dirty tricks, and assorted acts of thuggery by a group of goons whose leaders included G. Gordon Liddy and the late E. Howard Hunt. Watergate meant a coverup of those felonies with more felonies, set up by lawyers and bureaucrats who collected cash payoffs from major corporations and then handed out hush money and secret campaign slush funds. Watergate implicated dozens of perps, from Hunt and Liddy all the way up to the president, his palace guard, and his crooked minions at the highest levels of the Justice Department, the FBI and the CIA.

Theo Anderson’s post, “Just Say What You Want: Will Progressives Ever Pass Political Linguistics 101?” at In These Times covers some familiar ground, but in an interesting way. Anderson’s topic is missed framing opportunities on the left, according to the writings of George Lakoff (and touching on the insights of the right’s framing wizard Frank Luntz). It seems right on time, as the 2010 political season kicks into high gear, and Anderson does a good job of keeping it current in his lede:

It’s easy to imagine Frank Luntz–the baby-faced Republican wordsmith and marketing guru–as a kind of outsize trickster in a political fairy tale. When he comes across words and phrases that don’t pack enough punch, or that pose a threat to conservatism, he waves a magic wand and they become rhetorical winners for the GOP. Oil drilling? Poof. Energy exploration! The estate tax? Poof. The death tax! Healthcare reform? Poof. Government takeover of medicine! Global warming? Poof. Climate change! Government eavesdropping? Poof. Electronic intercepts! Riding roughshod over civil liberties? Poof. Tools to combat terrorism!

Ouch. Did he have to remind us? Anderson provides a video clip of Luntz explaining his theories of effective rally signs to Glen Beck. Not to demonize our adversary, but think of it as Satan instructing his younger, dumber brother. Prompting Anderson to ask his readers:

…So the interesting question is, why can’t two play this game? Why are Democrats still so pitiful at framing public-policy debates? Why are progressives still talking about government “regulations” rather than, say, “fair-play guarantees”? In the healthcare debate, why was reforming the widely despised insurance industry such a hard sell? Why did Republicans hammer away at bureaucratic “death panels” while Democrats talked about the sleep-inducing “public option.”

Anderson answers the question by quoting from a UCBerkeleyNews.com interview with George Lakoff, who explains:

…Conservative foundations give large block grants year after year to their think tanks. They say, ‘Here’s several million dollars, do what you need to do.’ And basically, they build infrastructure, they build TV studios, hire intellectuals, set aside money to buy a lot of books to get them on the best-seller lists, hire research assistants for their intellectuals so they do well on TV, and hire agents to put them on TV. They do all of that. Why? Because the conservative moral system, which I analyzed in “Moral Politics,” has as its highest value preserving and defending the “strict father” system itself. And that means building infrastructure. As businessmen, they know how to do this very well.
Meanwhile, liberals’ conceptual system of the “nurturant parent” has as its highest value helping individuals who need help. The progressive foundations and donors give their money to a variety of grassroots organizations. They say, ‘We’re giving you $25,000, but don’t waste a penny of it. Make sure it all goes to the cause, don’t use it for administration, communication, infrastructure, or career development.’…

Anderson adds “…the fate of Lakoff’s think tank doesn’t bode well for progressives. It folded in 2008 due to–big surprise–a lack of funding. As the Institute’s brief life suggests, progressives haven’t yet gotten the message about the importance of framing.” Anderson sees an upside ahead:

The good news is that there’s plenty of material to work with, if we ever find the money and the will. “Big government” is responsible for so many things that Americans love–parks, libraries, free education through high school, subsidized higher education, roads, Social Security, drinkable water–the list goes on. Why not figure out ways to frame that fact with some political and marketing savvy? It will be difficult after 30 years of aggressive anti-government animus from the right. But it can be done.

Anderson forgets that the progressive left has done a better job of fund-raising in recent years, but his call to invest more in framing resources makes sense. He quotes a challenge from a chapter called “Talking Democracy” in Frances Moore Lappe’s recent book, Getting a Grip 2: Clarity, Creativity and Courage for the World We Really Want :

…”A big piece of the challenge is disciplining ourselves to find and use words that convey a new frame, one that spreads a sense of possibility and helps people see emerging signs of Living Democracy.”…Some of her suggestions for using better words to create this new frame? Empowered citizen instead of activist. Pro-conscience instead of pro-choice. Public protections instead of regulation. Fair-opportunity state instead of welfare state. Corporation-favoring trade instead of free trade. Global corporate control instead of globalization.

Dems do have a lot more to worry about in the months ahead, from the BP spill to high unemployment. But it can’t hurt to give a little more thought to how we project our concerns and the Republicans’ culpability.

This item by TDS Co-Editor William Galston is cross-posted from The New Republic.
As President Obama’s bipartisan fiscal commission gets set to convene, the Greek budget disaster has triggered the predictable flood of cautionary notes about how we’re spending too much and heading toward a debt crisis. Should these concerns illuminate the commission’s work–or are they merely alarmist?
Paul Krugman harbors no doubts: “Despite a chorus of voices claiming otherwise,” he writes, “we aren’t Greece.” But that’s not as encouraging as it sounds, he adds: “We are however, looking more and more like Japan. … [Recent data] suggest that we may be heading for a Japan-style lost decade, trapped in a prolonged period of high unemployment and slow growth.”
This diagnosis of our economic disease has implications for the policy prescription, Krugman argues. “For the past few months, much commentary on the economy … has had one central theme: policy makers are doing too much. Governments need to stop spending, we’re told. … Meanwhile, there are continual warnings that inflation is just around the corner and that the Fed needs to pull back from its efforts to support the economy.”
Krugman will have none of this: “[T]the truth is that policy makers aren’t doing too much; they’re doing too little.” We should enact another stimulus plan, and administration officials would push for one if Congress had not been “spooked by the deficit hawks.” For its part, he adds, the Fed should abandon its groundless fears of inflation and work instead to ward off the threat of deflation–the true cause of Japan’s failure to regain economic vitality.
So is Japan really a better baseline for U.S. policymakers than Greece, and is it close enough to serve as a guide for policy? To be sure, there are some important resemblances. Like the U.S., Japan experienced a sharp run-up in equity and real estate, followed by a collapse. As in the U.S., this reverse weakened the banking system and coincided with a sharp contraction in commercial lending. Like their American counterparts, Japanese policymakers responded with substantial fiscal and monetary stimulus.
These are qualitative similarities. But there are quantitative differences, and they are large enough to warrant caution about direct policy inferences. Stocks in the U.S. are down about 40 percent from their all-time high, versus 75 percent for Japan. While U.S. real estate is down about 30 percent from its peak, Japanese land values are down more than 80 percent. In Tokyo, residential real estate has fallen by more than 90 percent, and commercial real estate in the heart of the financial district sells for 1 percent of its 1989 value. Brookings economist and former CEA director Barry Bosworth estimates that as a share of GDP, the destruction of wealth in Japan from peak to trough was about five times what it has been in the United States. Given the key role of stocks as well as real estate loans in the balance sheets of Japanese banks, it’s reasonable to assume that the Japanese banking system experienced a disruption far worse than ours.
It would stand to reason, then, that restoring Japan’s economy to health would require an even larger policy response than the one we’ve seen in the United States thus far. In some respects, that is what happened. Unfortunately, it hasn’t worked.

Read more…

A new poll from Suffolk of the Nevada Republican Senate primary bears the topline finding that onetime frontrunner Sue “Chickens for Checkups” Lowden has now slipped into third place behind Tea Party favorite Sharron Angle and the more conventional conservative Danny Tarkanian. Since Lowden has continuously performed very well in general election tests against Harry Reid, her falling fortunes in the primary are good news for the embattled incumbent.
But below the toplines, the Suffolk provides an interesting glimpse into the psyches of Nevada Republicans. And two findings are of particular interest. First, there’s this eyebrow-raiser:

The next question concerns the oil leak which has continued to flow into the Gulf of Mexico for the last 7 weeks. Would you support a moratorium on all U.S. offshore drilling until appropriate safety measures have been designed and tested?

In their Politico article “Democrats and National Security,” TDS advisory council member Jeremy Rosner, executive vice president of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner and Matt Bennett, co-founder and vice president of Third Way provide critically-important insights for strengthening the party’s image. Bennett and Rosner explain:

Slightly more than 10 days ago, a U.S. airstrike killed Sheikh Said Al-Masri, Al Qaeda’s third in command. He was the highest level Al Qaeda operative to be “removed from the battlefield,” as the military puts it. The Wall Street Journal actually said in its editorial: “another success for the Obama administration.”
The Journal isn’t alone here. A national opinion poll by Democracy Corps and Third Way released Thursday shows that such battlefield successes are broadly popular – when the public knows about them. They serve to raise public trust in the ability of President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party to handle national security.

“When the public knows” is always the prerequisite for successful image-building and improvement in public opinion. It doesn’t matter how much good the Party does, if the achievement is not well-publicized. Moreover, say the authors:

This is also true for the fight against terrorism at home. When Democrats tout the administration’s effective response to the Times Square bombing, for example, a strong majority — 59 percent of likely voters — say they feel more confident about the party on national security.

According to the survey, add Rosner and Bennett,

The public responds strongly when Democrats stress key aspects of their record over the last 18 months and their vision going forward…This even includes areas where the public has historically lacked confidence in Democrats, like leading the U.S. military. This new survey shows that when Democrats speak directly about their efforts for the troops — including increased pay, providing more time between deployments and putting better weapons into the battlefield — more than two-thirds of respondents say they feel more confident about Democrats’ handling of national security.

Even better,

By contrast, the public is relatively cool to a range of messages that Republican leaders are now using on this. The best Democratic national security messages out-score the best GOP messages by a dozen points.
…In particular, we tested comments that House minority leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) and minority whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) have made recently, and they fared poorly…Boehner’s claim that the Obama administration has been “lucky” that recent terrorist attacks in the United States have failed lags behind the Democratic message on the alleged Times Square bomber by 15 points.
Meanwhile, Cantor’s point that the Obama nuclear policy has “put America at risk” made 52 percent of likely voters less confident in Republicans, compared to only the 41 percent made more confident.

The Dems’ edge in the survey is even more impressive, say the authors, because Republicans still hold an overall lead on national security issues, including “a 13-point lead over Democrats on the question of which party is more trusted on national security,” which the authors believe “underscores the need for Democrats to make their case more effectively.”
In addition to national security concerns, the public is highly anxious about economic security, with only one out of five survey respondents holding positive views of the economy. Interestingly, the lack of confidence in the economy adds to concerns about national security:

…This survey confirms our February finding that a strong majority – now 58 percent – rejects the argument that “America remains the strongest and most influential country.” Instead, they say “America is losing its global leadership” as China and other countries grow economically and hold more of our debt.
The public continues to see U.S. economic strength as the strongest factor pulling down our world standing – well ahead of things the left and right typically cite, like “Obama apologizing for past U.S. policies” or “treatment of prisoners at places like Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.”
Accordingly, the only Republican message we tested that really lands with the public is on the economy.

Bennett and Rosner go on to note that the Obama Administration “emphasizes the importance of “renewal” at home as an element of national strength,” and they urge Dem candidates to do likewise, “integrating their plans for economic revival into their narrative on national security,” even as they urge “a muscular message about U.S. successes in the fight against terrorism.”
This is an astute and important insight. A strong national security profile includes both a determination to eradicate terrorism, evidenced by concrete achievements, coupled with a credible, uncompromising commitment to widely-shared economic uplift. With such a commitment, the Democratic Party will lay a solid foundation for a growing majority.

Jonathan Chait has an insightful post at The New Republic addressing the GOP manipulation of “the cult of the presidency” to blame President Obama for failing to quickly fix the BP disaster in the Gulf. Chait faults the media for embracing the simplistic model of the President as “soul nourisher, a hope giver, a living American talisman against hurricanes, terrorism, economic downturns, and spiritual malaise” cited by the Cato Institute’s Gene Healy, as playing into the hands of conservative cheap shot artists. Chait concludes,

The intellectual task of liberalism is not to make government responsible for everything. It is to rationally determine which things cannot be handled by the private sector. No less than the dogmatic anti-statism of the right, the cult of the presidency is an enemy of that task.

Chait’s post brings into focus a useful perspective which can inform the response of progressives, as well as the white house.

Conservatives have been working overtime to convince Americans that the Gulf oil spill crisis is “Obama’s Katrina,” on the apparent theory that it’s a symbol of administration fecklessness on the order of Bush’s initial immobility during the destruction of New Orleans and the death of many of its citizens. Now blame-shifting for the disaster is entirely understandable coming from the “drill baby drill” crowd, one of whose heroes, Dick Cheney, probably contributed a lot more to the Gulf disaster than anyone currently on the public payroll.
But putting aside the injustice of blaming Obama for the spill or efforts to mitigate the damage, is it true that the “Katrina” label is politically as well as morally deadly?
Interestingly enough, Alan Abramowitz has taken a look back at the actual effect of the Katrina disaster on George W. Bush’s approval ratings, and finds that it was minimal:

President Bush’s average approval rating was 44 percent in August [of 2005], before Katrina, and 44 percent again in September, after Katrina. Moreover, the rate of decline in the months following Katrina appears very similar to the rate of decline in the months before Katrina.

If you’ve been following the bizarre saga of front-running Republican gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley of SC, you may have noticed things quiet down over the weekend. There was no new evidence from blogger Will Folks to support his allegations of an illicit affair with the candidate, and news coverage in the Palmetto State moved on to other subjects.
Then today Lt. Gov. Andre “Stray Animals” Bauer, who was running second to Haley in the most recent poll of the gubernatorial race (from Insider Advantage), fired one of his top political advisors, a consultant named Larry Marchant, for “inappropriate conduct,” and immediately the conservative blogosphere lit up with “ah-hah” claims that Marchant was dumped for complicity in a conspiracy to threaten or bribe Folks into making his allegations against Haley.
But no, according to Marchant, the “inappropriate conduct” was a one-night stand with Nikki Haley back in 2008!
Gaze in awe.
UPCATEGORY: Democratic Strategist
If this can all get more byzantine, I’m sure it will.